reasonable or not; or else Monk would find the man who was guilty, and prove that.
Of course what he wanted, far more than the poor devil who’d killed Mickey Parfitt, was the man who had set him up in business, and had found his clientele among those whose weakness for the excitement of the forbidden, the illegal, and the obscene he had fed and exploited. Monk would find and prove that, whoever it was, even if it were Arthur Ballinger himself, as Sullivan had claimed. Indeed, even were it Lord Cardew-anyone, without exception.
The ferry reached the far side. Monk paid the fare and climbed the slippery steps up to the dock.
He was reluctant to prosecute Rupert Cardew, but there was no possible way to avoid it. What grieved him most was that the whole thing was so utterly pointless. He would never have taken off his distinctive silk cravat, deliberately knotted it, and then strangled an unconscious man. It seemed such an unnecessary thing to do-and, Monk realized, one that would give him no emotional satisfaction. There was no bodily contact, no release of the pent-up violence. There was something cold-blooded about it. But that was the only part he did not understand. The passion to destroy Parfitt he understood perfectly.
He reached the top of the steps as the sun came through the haze and made the dew on the stone momentarily bright. He walked quickly toward the road.
Had Rupert really been naive enough to think that would end the trade? Was he so spoiled, so cosseted from reality, that he believed a man like Parfitt was the power behind the business, the one who found the vulnerable patrons and then judged exactly how far to bleed each one?
But it was the man behind Parfitt that Monk wanted, and that was what he had in mind an hour later when he called to see Oliver Rathbone. After a short wait, he was shown into Rathbone’s neat and elegant room.
“Good morning, Monk,” Rathbone said with some surprise. “A new case?” He indicated the chair opposite his desk for Monk to sit down.
“Thank you.” Monk accepted, leaning back as if he were relaxed, crossing his legs. “The same case.”
Rathbone smiled, sitting also and hitching his trouser to stop it from creasing as he crossed his legs, and he too leaned back. “Since we are on opposite sides, this should prove interesting. What can I do for you?”
“Perhaps save Cardew from the rope.”
Rathbone’s smile vanished, a look of pain in his eyes. Monk saw it and understood. Monk was glad it was not his skill or judgment on which rested the weight of the saving or losing of a man’s life.
“I’m sorry,” Monk apologized. It was probably inappropriate, but for a moment they were not adversaries. They felt the same pity, and revulsion, at the thought of hanging. “I have no wish to prosecute him at all,” he went on. “When I first found Parfitt’s body, I considered not even looking for whoever killed him, after I’d seen the boat and the boys kept there. But when the cravat turned up, I had no choice.”
Rathbone’s face was bleak. “I know that. What is it you want, Monk?”
“The man behind it. Don’t you?”
“Of course. But I have no idea who that is.” He met Monk’s eyes directly, without a flicker. Was he remembering the night when Sullivan had killed Phillips so hideously, and then himself, after he had said that the man behind it all was Arthur Ballinger? Why had he pointed to Ballinger? Had it been anger, ignorance, madness, while the balance of his mind turned? Had it been revenge for something quite different? Or the truth?
Rathbone could not afford to think that the man was Margaret’s father. The price of that would be devastating, yet nor could he afford to ignore it. Monk did not want to do this either, but he also could not look away, for Cardew, and, more important to him, for Scuff.
“No …” Monk said slowly. “But if the right pressure were put upon Cardew, then he might give enough information for us to find out.”
“Why should he?” Rathbone asked, his voice tight and careful. “Surely by doing that he would automatically be admitting to the most powerful motive for killing Parfitt. I know that you believe you can prove that he did kill Parfitt, but he swears he did not.”
“And you believe him?” Monk said. “Actually, there is no point in your assuming that, even if you are right. It is what the jury believes that matters. If he will give us a record of every payment he made to Parfitt, dates and amounts, we might be able to trace it through Parfitt’s books. If it comes out in the open in court, it could shake other things loose.”
“And hang Cardew for certain,” Rathbone said quietly. “His own society will never forgive him for frequenting a boat like that, whether he killed the bastard who ran it or not.” His mouth pulled into a delicately bitter smile. “Apart from anything else, it would betray the fact that men of his social and financial class were the chief clients, and enablers of creatures like Parfitt. And while that is true, making it public is another thing altogether.”
“I know that,” Monk conceded. “But his revulsion when he learned the real nature of the business, but was still bled dry, will earn him some sympathy. That is your job, not protecting the reputations of others like him. I know no evidence that his story on that account is anything but the truth.”
Rathbone put his elbows on the desk, and his fingertips very gently together. “You are offering me life in prison in exchange for full admission, with details you can prove, of his visit to the boat, the nature of what went on there, and his payment of blackmail money to Parfitt? And all this is in the hope that it will somehow lead you to the man behind it?”
There was no point in arguing the shadings of meaning. “Yes.”
“I’ll ask him, but I’m not sure if I can recommend it is in his interest. God, what a mess!”
Monk did not answer him.
Monk worked on the river the rest of the day. There had been a large theft of spices from an East Indiaman in the Pool of London, and it took him until nearly midnight to trace the goods and arrest at least half the men involved in the crime. By quarter to one, a new moon in a mackerel sky made the river ghostly. Ships were riding at anchor, sails furled, like a gently stirring lace fretwork against the light, beautiful and totally without color. There was only a faint murmur of water and the sharp smell of salt in the air.
Monk stepped off the ferry at Princes Stairs and walked slowly up the hill to home.
Hester had left the light on in the parlor, but it was only when he stepped in to turn the gas off that he saw she was curled up in the large armchair, sound asleep.
His first thought was clear. She’d been waiting for him, or she would have been in bed. Was Scuff ill? No, of course not. If he were, she would have been with him. He remembered how many nights she had spent in the chair beside Scuff’s bed when he had been injured hunting the assassin in the sewers.
He bent down and spoke her name softly, not to startle her.
“Hester.”
She opened her eyes and sat up, smiling, pushing her hair back off her face where it had fallen out of its pins. “He didn’t do it,” she said with intense pleasure.
Monk was confused and too tired to think. “Who didn’t?”
“Rupert Cardew.” She stood up, so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her and smell her skin and her hair, clean cotton and, very faintly, soap. “I’m sorry,” she went on. “I know that leaves the case open and you have to go back and start again. But I’m just so glad it wasn’t Rupert.”
“He told you that?” he asked. “I’m surprised they let you in to see him. Did his father take you?”
A look of disgust flickered across her face. “William, for heaven’s sake! I’m not a complete simpleton. No, I haven’t been to see him, nor would I expect him to say anything different.” She smoothed her skirts without much effect; they were creased beyond any help but a flat iron. “With help from Crow, I found a prostitute Rupert visited earlier that day, and she admits that she stole his cravat and gave it to someone else, but she’s terrified to say who. But if Rupert didn’t have it, then he couldn’t have used it to strangle Mickey Parfitt, and that’s the only real evidence against him. All the rest just bears that up. He never denied having been on the boat, or having been blackmailed for it. But so have many other people.”
She had just broken his case against Cardew. He should have been disconcerted, even angry, but instead he felt an absurd sense of relief.
She saw it in his eyes and put her arms around his neck, pulling his head down gently and kissing him.
Monk woke late, and Hester was already up. It was a moment or two before he remembered what Hester had told him about the cravat. When it came back, he leaped out of bed, washed, shaved, and dressed as fast as he could. He had a new idea forming in his mind, and he had to draw the pieces of it together, prove them one by
